Hi!
I am an occasional editor of Wikipedia, I read it a lot, I edit sometimes, and I am at all not familiar with bureaucracies and rules Wikipedia community has developed through years (call me lazy, but they simply always look too scary and too many for me to even start reading them, walls and walls of text). When I interact with Wikipedia I thus try to assume what reasonable rules for creating a collaborative source of all human knowledge would be.
As such I would like to share one positive feedback and one negative feedback (frustration). The latter comes from my surprise between what I would assume rules would be and what I have experienced. I am sharing this to help prevent similar frustrations to other editors who maybe be less persistent than me and just give up.
I am also guessing this has come up again and again in the past.
Anyway. First the positive feedback. I love the visual editor! I finally switched to it and I am not going back! This is a life saver for somebody who just occasionally edits Wikipedia. No need to anymore guess if I should use single [ ] or double [[ ]]. No need to try to remember the syntax for references every time when I am editing Wikipedia after few months pause. Great job!
But the negative feedback comes from me getting too enthusiastic about my new visual editor experience and I decided to create some my own new articles instead of just editing existing ones. The result was that one of such articles was speedily deleted without any due process, because it was deemed insignificant, no discussion, in a day.
The whole notion of insignificant and not notable articles comes to me as a surprise. It seems to me as a legacy of printed encyclopedias which were limited in number of pages printed. But an online encyclopedia? How is this possible?
Why I have problems with this:
I created an English article which is significant at least for people in Slovenia, with references to local news articles. How can other editors who might not know the subject, and are not from Slovenia, decide that this is not significant and just delete a page, without even starting a discussion? I commented on the talk page citing reasons and it was simply ignored, and everything deleted? Why is not enough to put a notice there to improve the article? Allow others to add content, explain more, give their input?
So, a general question is: how can we build a global encyclopedia with editors who does not understand significance of a particular article in a local environment?
Why are articles simply deleted instead of guiding users on how to improve them?
Why there is no process involved where interested people could discuss why is something significant? A voting process where people could say "oh, I care about this"?
Furthermore, everything happened in a day. There are timezones involved, some of us have to do other things in our lives. Are you sure that such short deadlines really foster global community? If this is something which is regularly done at Wikipedia, I think that this is coming from a big position of privilege. Of editors who can be in front of their computers the whole day and engage in editing the Wikipedia all the time. Not everyone can afford that. Especially looking at this globally. One day notice? This is crazy.
But my main issue is conceptual. Why is there such a rule in the first place? Why are we deleting anything except for things which are not true? Is Internet too small to have all human knowledge in one place? Why it is a problem if some Wikipedia article is cared by "only" 100 people? 1000 people? Will it run out of disk space?
I think this comes from the reason that we are trying to copy what is encyclopedia too much without adapting the idea to the 21st century. It is like academic papers which had selection because it was costly to print it, but in 21st century we can have then academic journals which simply accept all submissions, only that they are technically sound (in case of Wikipedia, that they have structure of an encyclopedia article, with all other rules about the content of the article, and references). See Plos One: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLOS_ONE This revolutionized academia. And I think Wikipedia should do a similar thing.
One reason I found is that the issue why deleting articles is that there is a limited attention of editors. If there are too many articles editors would not be able to maintain good quality for all of them.
I cannot agree with this argument. This is the most short-sighted argument ever. First, all articles start by being low quality and then they improve. Second, by allowing new articles to exist, you are also getting new editors who care about those new articles. The article I created? Guess what, you would have at least one editor (me) who would care about it. Now you have 0.5 editor less (me) who cares about anything else less now.
This is a feedback loop. More content you allow, more editors you will have. Invite people to write about fiction they love, local spaces, local events, everything. If it is true, if it has a form of an encyclopedia article, why it could not exist?
We could create special tags instead deletion or a warning at the top of the article:
"Warning: article has a small readerbase and might lack in quality. Be extra wary of potential untruths and errors in the article."
Done. Wikipedia grows, Wikipedia is happy, and new editors do not get frustrated. So simple.
Yes, people will say. But we are building encyclopedia. Encyclopedia has to have only notable entries. Yes. In 20st century and before. Maybe it is time we reinvent encyclopedia? And maybe we are doing more than just encyclopedia, but "a collaborative source of all human knowledge", in a form of encyclopedia.
I just hope this rule does not exist only so that Wikia has a business model. You remove pages from Wikipedia so that people have to go to Wikia. Why?
Why introducing artificial scarcity?
Without such rules to back them up, trigger happy editors would not be deleting articles. Instead, editors like me would have time and opportunity to improve them, and articles might through time be proven significant because people would stumble upon them and you would see stats of readerbase. Now, nobody can know how many readers are in fact searching for that article on Google but cannot find it.
I know it is impossible to change anything in how Wikipedia operates. It is just too big and has too big momentum in a way it is already doing things. But please please consider changing this rules. No need for deletion. Just mark them. Grey them out. Let's have another state between "existing" and "non-existing". Like "articles in limbo". They are not part of encyclopedia, but they are part of human knowledge. We are unsure about them.
Thanks for your attention, to those who managed to read through my long rant. Sorry.
Mitar
Hi Mitar,
I haven't been on Wiki-l that long so not sure how (or if) people respond to this issue, which is somewhat common. I will take a stab at responding and will try to keep it short and sweet as you said you don't want a lot of Wiki:Rulz....
First off: Please include your user name and the name of the article you were working on. Without any context it's impossible to help you. Thankfully I was able to dig and find the page, etc. But include identifying info if you want help / resolution.
User name: Mitar
Name of page: Poligon
Deletion log: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=Polig...
Discussion (with reason): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG#Please_remove_the_tag_from_Polig...
Second off:
This happens a lot. Here at Wikimedia NYC, where support a lot of editathons with new users, who tend to want to create new pages, speedy deletion of articles as well as edits is unfortunately common.
I don't have rights to view the deleted article, but if someone who does moves it to your sandbox or a draft space you could work on it there, and I would be happy to take a quick look at it / try to help.
Third off:
The structures you propose exist, but if you don't educate yourself on procedures and policies and are a casual editor, you might not be aware of them. Not trying to be mean or harsh here but I appreciate your passion and thoughts and want you to know there are solutions in place....
Potential solutions:
The best solution I've found if as a newish user you are wanting to create new articles (as a short stub) is to do it in your Sandbox and make sure you have at least 5 (or even 10) very solid citations. Have a friendly editor take a look at the article before attempting to move it to the main space.
It is critical you use the citations to establish notability. Not everything is notable, and especially if the Wiki-en audience isn't knowledgeable of the subject matter, it's even more important.
I know (and vouch for) DGG and he's queued a few articles I've worked on for deletion. :-) He and many folks doing Articles for Deletion / Speedy Deletion are well-intentioned, but sometimes it is a bit of an active discussion. I suspect that folks who are evaluating deletions are doing it quickly sometimes, and don't always have the context, but their goal is to "protect" Wiki content, so....
The IRC help channel ( http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-en-help) is also a great resource -- especially if it's a time zone issue.
Glad you are enjoying the Visual Editor.
Best,
Erika
*Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle* Secretary, Wikimedia NYC
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 1:49 AM, Mitar mmitar@gmail.com wrote:
Hi!
I am an occasional editor of Wikipedia, I read it a lot, I edit sometimes, and I am at all not familiar with bureaucracies and rules Wikipedia community has developed through years (call me lazy, but they simply always look too scary and too many for me to even start reading them, walls and walls of text). When I interact with Wikipedia I thus try to assume what reasonable rules for creating a collaborative source of all human knowledge would be.
As such I would like to share one positive feedback and one negative feedback (frustration). The latter comes from my surprise between what I would assume rules would be and what I have experienced. I am sharing this to help prevent similar frustrations to other editors who maybe be less persistent than me and just give up.
I am also guessing this has come up again and again in the past.
Anyway. First the positive feedback. I love the visual editor! I finally switched to it and I am not going back! This is a life saver for somebody who just occasionally edits Wikipedia. No need to anymore guess if I should use single [ ] or double [[ ]]. No need to try to remember the syntax for references every time when I am editing Wikipedia after few months pause. Great job!
But the negative feedback comes from me getting too enthusiastic about my new visual editor experience and I decided to create some my own new articles instead of just editing existing ones. The result was that one of such articles was speedily deleted without any due process, because it was deemed insignificant, no discussion, in a day.
The whole notion of insignificant and not notable articles comes to me as a surprise. It seems to me as a legacy of printed encyclopedias which were limited in number of pages printed. But an online encyclopedia? How is this possible?
Why I have problems with this:
I created an English article which is significant at least for people in Slovenia, with references to local news articles. How can other editors who might not know the subject, and are not from Slovenia, decide that this is not significant and just delete a page, without even starting a discussion? I commented on the talk page citing reasons and it was simply ignored, and everything deleted? Why is not enough to put a notice there to improve the article? Allow others to add content, explain more, give their input?
So, a general question is: how can we build a global encyclopedia with editors who does not understand significance of a particular article in a local environment?
Why are articles simply deleted instead of guiding users on how to improve them?
Why there is no process involved where interested people could discuss why is something significant? A voting process where people could say "oh, I care about this"?
Furthermore, everything happened in a day. There are timezones involved, some of us have to do other things in our lives. Are you sure that such short deadlines really foster global community? If this is something which is regularly done at Wikipedia, I think that this is coming from a big position of privilege. Of editors who can be in front of their computers the whole day and engage in editing the Wikipedia all the time. Not everyone can afford that. Especially looking at this globally. One day notice? This is crazy.
But my main issue is conceptual. Why is there such a rule in the first place? Why are we deleting anything except for things which are not true? Is Internet too small to have all human knowledge in one place? Why it is a problem if some Wikipedia article is cared by "only" 100 people? 1000 people? Will it run out of disk space?
I think this comes from the reason that we are trying to copy what is encyclopedia too much without adapting the idea to the 21st century. It is like academic papers which had selection because it was costly to print it, but in 21st century we can have then academic journals which simply accept all submissions, only that they are technically sound (in case of Wikipedia, that they have structure of an encyclopedia article, with all other rules about the content of the article, and references). See Plos One: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLOS_ONE This revolutionized academia. And I think Wikipedia should do a similar thing.
One reason I found is that the issue why deleting articles is that there is a limited attention of editors. If there are too many articles editors would not be able to maintain good quality for all of them.
I cannot agree with this argument. This is the most short-sighted argument ever. First, all articles start by being low quality and then they improve. Second, by allowing new articles to exist, you are also getting new editors who care about those new articles. The article I created? Guess what, you would have at least one editor (me) who would care about it. Now you have 0.5 editor less (me) who cares about anything else less now.
This is a feedback loop. More content you allow, more editors you will have. Invite people to write about fiction they love, local spaces, local events, everything. If it is true, if it has a form of an encyclopedia article, why it could not exist?
We could create special tags instead deletion or a warning at the top of the article:
"Warning: article has a small readerbase and might lack in quality. Be extra wary of potential untruths and errors in the article."
Done. Wikipedia grows, Wikipedia is happy, and new editors do not get frustrated. So simple.
Yes, people will say. But we are building encyclopedia. Encyclopedia has to have only notable entries. Yes. In 20st century and before. Maybe it is time we reinvent encyclopedia? And maybe we are doing more than just encyclopedia, but "a collaborative source of all human knowledge", in a form of encyclopedia.
I just hope this rule does not exist only so that Wikia has a business model. You remove pages from Wikipedia so that people have to go to Wikia. Why?
Why introducing artificial scarcity?
Without such rules to back them up, trigger happy editors would not be deleting articles. Instead, editors like me would have time and opportunity to improve them, and articles might through time be proven significant because people would stumble upon them and you would see stats of readerbase. Now, nobody can know how many readers are in fact searching for that article on Google but cannot find it.
I know it is impossible to change anything in how Wikipedia operates. It is just too big and has too big momentum in a way it is already doing things. But please please consider changing this rules. No need for deletion. Just mark them. Grey them out. Let's have another state between "existing" and "non-existing". Like "articles in limbo". They are not part of encyclopedia, but they are part of human knowledge. We are unsure about them.
Thanks for your attention, to those who managed to read through my long rant. Sorry.
Mitar
-- http://mitar.tnode.com/ https://twitter.com/mitar_m
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 11:29 PM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Mitar,
...
First off: Please include your user name and the name of the article you were working on. Without any context it's impossible to help you. Thankfully I was able to dig and find the page, etc.
Brill Lyle, normally connecting real world identity with Wikipedia id within wikipedia is contrary to local ethos, but since Mitar links to his real page from User page, it's ok in this case.
Mitar says.....
Why introducing artificial scarcity?
You have been hit by crossfire in the long running Inclusionist vs. Deletionist war. Your rant is an excellent exposition of the Inclusionist position. When I travel among Random Articles I often wonder why they deleted AAA but they leave this BBB. I guess the explanation of that is the sprawling size of English WP, there too much to curate satisfactorily. Currently I'd say the Deletionists are winning.
I hope that doesn't discourage you from wikipedia. Also, consider contributing to http://wikinfo.org , concept is similar but the rules are different, more willing to accept polemics and non-neutrality
]]] If you see something, say something. Snowden did. [[[
Hoi, The English deletionists may be winning. Thank (include your deity) for Wikidata. We can include much more and, we do include much more. It includes more people who won an award that what English Wikipedia does. Thanks, GerardM
[1] http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.nl/2016/06/wikidata-lange-taylor-prize.html
On 25 June 2016 at 10:11, carl hansen carlhansen1234@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 11:29 PM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Mitar,
...
First off: Please include your user name and the name of the article you were
working
on. Without any context it's impossible to help you. Thankfully I was
able
to dig and find the page, etc.
Brill Lyle, normally connecting real world identity with Wikipedia id within wikipedia is contrary to local ethos, but since Mitar links to his real page from User page, it's ok in this case.
Mitar says.....
Why introducing artificial scarcity?
You have been hit by crossfire in the long running Inclusionist vs. Deletionist war. Your rant is an excellent exposition of the Inclusionist position. When I travel among Random Articles I often wonder why they deleted AAA but they leave this BBB. I guess the explanation of that is the sprawling size of English WP, there too much to curate satisfactorily. Currently I'd say the Deletionists are winning.
I hope that doesn't discourage you from wikipedia. Also, consider contributing to http://wikinfo.org , concept is similar but the rules are different, more willing to accept polemics and non-neutrality
]]] If you see something, say something. Snowden did. [[[ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
As a deletion I'd say we totally lost at en.wiki, we can maybe tie on other wikis.
Life is never B/W, grey is everywhere.
Vito
2016-06-25 12:18 GMT+02:00 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, The English deletionists may be winning. Thank (include your deity) for Wikidata. We can include much more and, we do include much more. It includes more people who won an award that what English Wikipedia does. Thanks, GerardM
[1] http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.nl/2016/06/wikidata-lange-taylor-prize.html
On 25 June 2016 at 10:11, carl hansen carlhansen1234@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 11:29 PM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Mitar,
...
First off: Please include your user name and the name of the article you were
working
on. Without any context it's impossible to help you. Thankfully I was
able
to dig and find the page, etc.
Brill Lyle, normally connecting real world identity with Wikipedia id within wikipedia is contrary to local ethos, but since Mitar links to his real page from User page, it's ok in this case.
Mitar says.....
Why introducing artificial scarcity?
You have been hit by crossfire in the long running Inclusionist vs. Deletionist war. Your rant is an excellent exposition of the Inclusionist position. When I travel among Random Articles I often wonder why they deleted AAA but they leave this BBB. I guess the explanation of that is the sprawling size of English WP, there too
much
to curate satisfactorily. Currently I'd say the Deletionists are winning.
I hope that doesn't discourage you from wikipedia. Also, consider contributing to http://wikinfo.org , concept is similar but the rules
are
different, more willing to accept polemics and non-neutrality
]]] If you see something, say something. Snowden did. [[[ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 25 June 2016 at 13:14, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
As a deletion I'd say we totally lost at en.wiki, we can maybe tie on other wikis.
As so many projects have learned so painfully in the last decade the English Wikipedia knows what they are doing.
Experiences described by a new editor are valid and meaningful even if, in relating them, the new editor shows some lack of familiarity with Wikipedia customs and established doctrines. It's certainly true that the process of patrolling pages for quality can be, from the perspective of a newbie writer, abrupt and off-putting. Thanks for telling us about the difficulty you encountered, Mitar.
Thank you Carl. I will make sure to note re: real world identity going forward. That was very helpful.
Agree Deletionists seem to be winning -- I've been told a contribution I made was "too encyclopedic" for Wikipedia, among other nonsense. An entry about a woman of course. Sometimes it's very absurd, and seems about someone marking their territory than all of us working together to improve the content.
It is a detriment to the community, as I know a lot of us adding content are working really hard, are establishing notability, and using fully cited information, etc. Really want to add content. But it's definitely not easy. Blargh.... :-)
Mitar is not being specific about the entry and seems more into discussing the process.
But for those newer editors needing help, please know that there is help out there to get under-represented (but notable) entries and content onto Wikipedia. There are a lot of initiatives and efforts to support that work. A lot of us would like to make the encyclopedia representative of diverse and culturally non-Western entities, to make it better, etc.
I also suspect people flock to editing Wikidata instead of Wikipedia because maybe it's less contested?
Best,
- Erika
*Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle*
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 4:11 AM, carl hansen carlhansen1234@gmail.com wrote:
Brill Lyle, normally connecting real world identity with Wikipedia id within wikipedia is contrary to local ethos, but since Mitar links to his real page from User page, it's ok in this case.
Mitar says.....
Why introducing artificial scarcity?
You have been hit by crossfire in the long running Inclusionist vs. Deletionist war. Your rant is an excellent exposition of the Inclusionist position. When I travel among Random Articles I often wonder why they deleted AAA but they leave this BBB. I guess the explanation of that is the sprawling size of English WP, there too much to curate satisfactorily. Currently I'd say the Deletionists are winning.
Hi!
Thank you for your responses.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 11:29 PM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Please include your user name and the name of the article you were working on. Without any context it's impossible to help you. Thankfully I was able to dig and find the page, etc. But include identifying info if you want help / resolution.
I didn't want to include this information because I didn't want to make it about my issue in particular. I wanted to give feedback and discuss principles behind my experience.
I otherwise had good experience editing Wikipedia. Other editors were constructive and often with patience helped me learn how to improve the content and related rules of Wikipedia, which also seemed reasonable. But this rule I do not get and cannot relate to, thus I am bringing it here.
I read that Wikipedia is trying hard to get new editors and this is why I am sharing this story here. Because from all my experience this one is the most problematic. It really pushes you off.
And it is pretty reasonable that it is problematic. Now that most clearly "notable" articles have been already written the one which are left will be increasingly more and more in the "gray zone". And increasingly local, specialized, where such mistakes might be common.
Maybe this policy for notability and significance had its historic place. It focused the community on the core set of articles, improving the quality of existing articles and created a name for Wikipedia. But I think maybe it is time that it is relaxed and a new level of articles is invited in. As I said, a warning could be used to tell readers that they are reading such a new article.
(Oh, and please improve talk pages, that way of communicating is also a mess, but that one I can understand, it is a technical legacy. It is cumbersome, but I can understand it. But it does influence other issues then, like this one when you have to discuss something about Wikipedia. Why Wikipedia does not simply use some issue-management system where people could be opening issues for articles and other people and have conversation through that? It would also allow much better statistics of how many issues were satisfactory resolved, for example, for all sides.)
Discussion (with reason): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG#Please_remove_the_tag_from_Polig...
Yes, it is clear that the editor who deleted it does not understand local importance of the article. They could read the news articles I cited and might get a better picture.
The issue is here that while new editors can edit pages, see tags to improve sources and so on, that is all helpful. But once a page is deleted, they are pushed off and cannot do anything anymore. I just started with the article. I could improve it through time, get more information in why it is important and so on. But once it is deleted nothing of this is not possible. I have to go around and find ways how to object to this, and I have no idea how to do that. (This is also why I am writing to such general list like this.)
I don't have rights to view the deleted article, but if someone who does moves it to your sandbox or a draft space you could work on it there, and I would be happy to take a quick look at it / try to help.
But the problem is systemic. It does not matter if we resolve it for this particular page. Also, if a page is in my sandbox then it is only on me to fix it and improve it. If it is its dedicated namespace then others can help edit it because they can find it. This is the whole power of Wikipedia, that it is not that one person has to write the whole article, but that multiple people can collaborate.
Maybe a solution would be that an article can exist under its namespace and link then to this sandbox version saying that article is still in development. In general Wikipedia could be just an directory of pages, some could be edited in Wikipedia and some could be linked elsewhere, until they are seen as worthy of Wikipedia.
The structures you propose exist, but if you don't educate yourself on procedures and policies and are a casual editor, you might not be aware of them. Not trying to be mean or harsh here but I appreciate your passion and thoughts and want you to know there are solutions in place....
I followed instructions which were presented to me in the speedy deletion tag: I opened a talk page for an article and objected to deletion. The result was that next day the article was deleted without any discussion.
What structures exist here?
I am talking about structures which would prevent deletion, and structures which would help editors explain local significance of articles. Structures which might exist to revert deletion are too late. Editors might not return anymore.
The best solution I've found if as a newish user you are wanting to create new articles (as a short stub) is to do it in your Sandbox and make sure you have at least 5 (or even 10) very solid citations.
I had citations. It seems it was not enough.
Have a friendly editor take a look at the article before attempting to move it to the main space.
Friendly editor? How am I supposed to find one? I do not want to be harsh, but I am here to write content, not to mingle with other editors and socialize. I have enough other things in my life. I can understand that for some editors this is their online social space/forum and they know each other. But for me is something where I get to occasionally, I want to fix a thing I care about, and I move on. If I find trash on the floor I pick it up and carry it to the nearest thrash can. I do not want to interact with city utilities system or talk to supervisors.
(BTW, talking to a friendly editor comes back to the issue of really strange talk pages. Probably all you got used to them, but they are really a mess.)
It is critical you use the citations to establish notability. Not everything is notable, and especially if the Wiki-en audience isn't knowledgeable of the subject matter, it's even more important.
I did that. Of course, citations were to Slovenian news articles in Slovenian, only one was in English. And this is why I started the Wikipedia article. To bring more international exposure to a local thing.
but their goal is to "protect" Wiki content, so....
Hm, protect from what? Existence? If content is true, why it needs protection? If content is not yet complete, guide it to being complete.
The IRC help channel ( http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-en-help) is also a great resource -- especially if it's a time zone issue.
BTW, you do realize that many of new people online and potential new editors are not familiar with IRC? Mailing list are already
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 1:11 AM, carl hansen carlhansen1234@gmail.com wrote:
You have been hit by crossfire in the long running Inclusionist vs. Deletionist war.
Instead of waging war, could we open some discussion about middle group solutions? For example, what is wrong with having such pages tagged with "not an encyclopedia-grade article, possible lacking notability and/or significance" and move on? And then we can discuss the merits of that tag being applied to a particular article. Which is much less new-editor-scary than a warning "page is nominated for speedy deletion" and bam, deleted.
Has this ever been put up for a vote by the community?
Mitar
Hi!
On Twitter I was pointed to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia
This is amazing. I think John Oliver should make a segment "Wikipedia Deletionism - how is this still a thing?"
I mean, is this a failure of Wikipedia community governance? Reading about this seems deletionists are just a vocal minority who benefit from the fact that deletion is much stronger action than keeping things. Destruction is always easier than creation.
There are 1536 inclusionists just on English Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Inclusionist_Wikipedians
And 280 deletionists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Deletionist_Wikipedians
So, how is this still a thing? How can this be put to a vote and finally move on? What is Wikipedia's governance process here? Does Wikipedia has something like https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/ ?
Mitar
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 12:06 PM, Mitar mmitar@gmail.com wrote:
Hi!
Thank you for your responses.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 11:29 PM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Please include your user name and the name of the article you were working on. Without any context it's impossible to help you. Thankfully I was able to dig and find the page, etc. But include identifying info if you want help / resolution.
I didn't want to include this information because I didn't want to make it about my issue in particular. I wanted to give feedback and discuss principles behind my experience.
I otherwise had good experience editing Wikipedia. Other editors were constructive and often with patience helped me learn how to improve the content and related rules of Wikipedia, which also seemed reasonable. But this rule I do not get and cannot relate to, thus I am bringing it here.
I read that Wikipedia is trying hard to get new editors and this is why I am sharing this story here. Because from all my experience this one is the most problematic. It really pushes you off.
And it is pretty reasonable that it is problematic. Now that most clearly "notable" articles have been already written the one which are left will be increasingly more and more in the "gray zone". And increasingly local, specialized, where such mistakes might be common.
Maybe this policy for notability and significance had its historic place. It focused the community on the core set of articles, improving the quality of existing articles and created a name for Wikipedia. But I think maybe it is time that it is relaxed and a new level of articles is invited in. As I said, a warning could be used to tell readers that they are reading such a new article.
(Oh, and please improve talk pages, that way of communicating is also a mess, but that one I can understand, it is a technical legacy. It is cumbersome, but I can understand it. But it does influence other issues then, like this one when you have to discuss something about Wikipedia. Why Wikipedia does not simply use some issue-management system where people could be opening issues for articles and other people and have conversation through that? It would also allow much better statistics of how many issues were satisfactory resolved, for example, for all sides.)
Discussion (with reason): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG#Please_remove_the_tag_from_Polig...
Yes, it is clear that the editor who deleted it does not understand local importance of the article. They could read the news articles I cited and might get a better picture.
The issue is here that while new editors can edit pages, see tags to improve sources and so on, that is all helpful. But once a page is deleted, they are pushed off and cannot do anything anymore. I just started with the article. I could improve it through time, get more information in why it is important and so on. But once it is deleted nothing of this is not possible. I have to go around and find ways how to object to this, and I have no idea how to do that. (This is also why I am writing to such general list like this.)
I don't have rights to view the deleted article, but if someone who does moves it to your sandbox or a draft space you could work on it there, and I would be happy to take a quick look at it / try to help.
But the problem is systemic. It does not matter if we resolve it for this particular page. Also, if a page is in my sandbox then it is only on me to fix it and improve it. If it is its dedicated namespace then others can help edit it because they can find it. This is the whole power of Wikipedia, that it is not that one person has to write the whole article, but that multiple people can collaborate.
Maybe a solution would be that an article can exist under its namespace and link then to this sandbox version saying that article is still in development. In general Wikipedia could be just an directory of pages, some could be edited in Wikipedia and some could be linked elsewhere, until they are seen as worthy of Wikipedia.
The structures you propose exist, but if you don't educate yourself on procedures and policies and are a casual editor, you might not be aware of them. Not trying to be mean or harsh here but I appreciate your passion and thoughts and want you to know there are solutions in place....
I followed instructions which were presented to me in the speedy deletion tag: I opened a talk page for an article and objected to deletion. The result was that next day the article was deleted without any discussion.
What structures exist here?
I am talking about structures which would prevent deletion, and structures which would help editors explain local significance of articles. Structures which might exist to revert deletion are too late. Editors might not return anymore.
The best solution I've found if as a newish user you are wanting to create new articles (as a short stub) is to do it in your Sandbox and make sure you have at least 5 (or even 10) very solid citations.
I had citations. It seems it was not enough.
Have a friendly editor take a look at the article before attempting to move it to the main space.
Friendly editor? How am I supposed to find one? I do not want to be harsh, but I am here to write content, not to mingle with other editors and socialize. I have enough other things in my life. I can understand that for some editors this is their online social space/forum and they know each other. But for me is something where I get to occasionally, I want to fix a thing I care about, and I move on. If I find trash on the floor I pick it up and carry it to the nearest thrash can. I do not want to interact with city utilities system or talk to supervisors.
(BTW, talking to a friendly editor comes back to the issue of really strange talk pages. Probably all you got used to them, but they are really a mess.)
It is critical you use the citations to establish notability. Not everything is notable, and especially if the Wiki-en audience isn't knowledgeable of the subject matter, it's even more important.
I did that. Of course, citations were to Slovenian news articles in Slovenian, only one was in English. And this is why I started the Wikipedia article. To bring more international exposure to a local thing.
but their goal is to "protect" Wiki content, so....
Hm, protect from what? Existence? If content is true, why it needs protection? If content is not yet complete, guide it to being complete.
The IRC help channel ( http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-en-help) is also a great resource -- especially if it's a time zone issue.
BTW, you do realize that many of new people online and potential new editors are not familiar with IRC? Mailing list are already
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 1:11 AM, carl hansen carlhansen1234@gmail.com wrote:
You have been hit by crossfire in the long running Inclusionist vs. Deletionist war.
Instead of waging war, could we open some discussion about middle group solutions? For example, what is wrong with having such pages tagged with "not an encyclopedia-grade article, possible lacking notability and/or significance" and move on? And then we can discuss the merits of that tag being applied to a particular article. Which is much less new-editor-scary than a warning "page is nominated for speedy deletion" and bam, deleted.
Has this ever been put up for a vote by the community?
Mitar
You are overly simplifying things, One can be both, some things just don't merit an article, an obscure band working out of a member's garage who have never had an audience of more than 500 shouldn't have an article because they really are not notable. On the other hand major artist should have article. Weighting the balance on that line between what should and shouldn't be kept is up to the community and which is why they have two sections of the site dedicated to it (articles for discussion, and deletion review),
If we do not have checks and balances in place wikipedia will quickly get overrun with articles on everyone and everything to ever exist regardless of the actual notability of the person/place/thing/event.
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 7:04 PM, Mitar mmitar@gmail.com wrote:
Hi!
On Twitter I was pointed to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia
This is amazing. I think John Oliver should make a segment "Wikipedia Deletionism - how is this still a thing?"
I mean, is this a failure of Wikipedia community governance? Reading about this seems deletionists are just a vocal minority who benefit from the fact that deletion is much stronger action than keeping things. Destruction is always easier than creation.
There are 1536 inclusionists just on English Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Inclusionist_Wikipedians
And 280 deletionists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Deletionist_Wikipedians
So, how is this still a thing? How can this be put to a vote and finally move on? What is Wikipedia's governance process here? Does Wikipedia has something like https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/ ?
Mitar
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 12:06 PM, Mitar mmitar@gmail.com wrote:
Hi!
Thank you for your responses.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 11:29 PM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com
wrote:
Please include your user name and the name of the article you were
working
on. Without any context it's impossible to help you. Thankfully I was
able
to dig and find the page, etc. But include identifying info if you want help / resolution.
I didn't want to include this information because I didn't want to make it about my issue in particular. I wanted to give feedback and discuss principles behind my experience.
I otherwise had good experience editing Wikipedia. Other editors were constructive and often with patience helped me learn how to improve the content and related rules of Wikipedia, which also seemed reasonable. But this rule I do not get and cannot relate to, thus I am bringing it here.
I read that Wikipedia is trying hard to get new editors and this is why I am sharing this story here. Because from all my experience this one is the most problematic. It really pushes you off.
And it is pretty reasonable that it is problematic. Now that most clearly "notable" articles have been already written the one which are left will be increasingly more and more in the "gray zone". And increasingly local, specialized, where such mistakes might be common.
Maybe this policy for notability and significance had its historic place. It focused the community on the core set of articles, improving the quality of existing articles and created a name for Wikipedia. But I think maybe it is time that it is relaxed and a new level of articles is invited in. As I said, a warning could be used to tell readers that they are reading such a new article.
(Oh, and please improve talk pages, that way of communicating is also a mess, but that one I can understand, it is a technical legacy. It is cumbersome, but I can understand it. But it does influence other issues then, like this one when you have to discuss something about Wikipedia. Why Wikipedia does not simply use some issue-management system where people could be opening issues for articles and other people and have conversation through that? It would also allow much better statistics of how many issues were satisfactory resolved, for example, for all sides.)
Discussion (with reason):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG#Please_remove_the_tag_from_Polig...
Yes, it is clear that the editor who deleted it does not understand local importance of the article. They could read the news articles I cited and might get a better picture.
The issue is here that while new editors can edit pages, see tags to improve sources and so on, that is all helpful. But once a page is deleted, they are pushed off and cannot do anything anymore. I just started with the article. I could improve it through time, get more information in why it is important and so on. But once it is deleted nothing of this is not possible. I have to go around and find ways how to object to this, and I have no idea how to do that. (This is also why I am writing to such general list like this.)
I don't have rights to view the deleted article, but if someone who does moves it to your sandbox or a draft space you could work on it there,
and I
would be happy to take a quick look at it / try to help.
But the problem is systemic. It does not matter if we resolve it for this particular page. Also, if a page is in my sandbox then it is only on me to fix it and improve it. If it is its dedicated namespace then others can help edit it because they can find it. This is the whole power of Wikipedia, that it is not that one person has to write the whole article, but that multiple people can collaborate.
Maybe a solution would be that an article can exist under its namespace and link then to this sandbox version saying that article is still in development. In general Wikipedia could be just an directory of pages, some could be edited in Wikipedia and some could be linked elsewhere, until they are seen as worthy of Wikipedia.
The structures you propose exist, but if you don't educate yourself on procedures and policies and are a casual editor, you might not be aware
of
them. Not trying to be mean or harsh here but I appreciate your passion
and
thoughts and want you to know there are solutions in place....
I followed instructions which were presented to me in the speedy deletion tag: I opened a talk page for an article and objected to deletion. The result was that next day the article was deleted without any discussion.
What structures exist here?
I am talking about structures which would prevent deletion, and structures which would help editors explain local significance of articles. Structures which might exist to revert deletion are too late. Editors might not return anymore.
The best solution I've found if as a newish user you are wanting to
create
new articles (as a short stub) is to do it in your Sandbox and make sure you have at least 5 (or even 10) very solid citations.
I had citations. It seems it was not enough.
Have a friendly editor take a look at the article before attempting to
move it to the main
space.
Friendly editor? How am I supposed to find one? I do not want to be harsh, but I am here to write content, not to mingle with other editors and socialize. I have enough other things in my life. I can understand that for some editors this is their online social space/forum and they know each other. But for me is something where I get to occasionally, I want to fix a thing I care about, and I move on. If I find trash on the floor I pick it up and carry it to the nearest thrash can. I do not want to interact with city utilities system or talk to supervisors.
(BTW, talking to a friendly editor comes back to the issue of really strange talk pages. Probably all you got used to them, but they are really a mess.)
It is critical you use the citations to establish notability. Not everything is notable, and especially if the Wiki-en audience isn't knowledgeable of the subject matter, it's even more important.
I did that. Of course, citations were to Slovenian news articles in Slovenian, only one was in English. And this is why I started the Wikipedia article. To bring more international exposure to a local thing.
but their goal is to "protect" Wiki content, so....
Hm, protect from what? Existence? If content is true, why it needs protection? If content is not yet complete, guide it to being complete.
The IRC help channel ( http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-en-help) is also a
great
resource -- especially if it's a time zone issue.
BTW, you do realize that many of new people online and potential new editors are not familiar with IRC? Mailing list are already
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 1:11 AM, carl hansen carlhansen1234@gmail.com
wrote:
You have been hit by crossfire in the long running Inclusionist vs. Deletionist war.
Instead of waging war, could we open some discussion about middle group solutions? For example, what is wrong with having such pages tagged with "not an encyclopedia-grade article, possible lacking notability and/or significance" and move on? And then we can discuss the merits of that tag being applied to a particular article. Which is much less new-editor-scary than a warning "page is nominated for speedy deletion" and bam, deleted.
Has this ever been put up for a vote by the community?
Mitar
-- http://mitar.tnode.com/ https://twitter.com/mitar_m
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Hi!
Thanks you for all the responses. It is really great to see this various explanations.
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 4:27 PM, John phoenixoverride@gmail.com wrote:
If we do not have checks and balances in place wikipedia will quickly get overrun with articles on everyone and everything to ever exist regardless of the actual notability of the person/place/thing/event.
Hm, while I understand the goal of high quality content, I do not understand why this has to be so black and white? Existence vs. non-existence? Why not introducing a third level of content, so that we would have something like:
- encyclopedic article in the main namespace - non-encyclopedic draft/stub/sandbox article in the same main namespace - deleted articles in a special namespace
There could be a special very small set of really deleted articles for legal reasons.
The main idea I would propose is that all of those articles should be editable. Even if article is deleted, people should be able to continue editing it, it should just be made that robots cannot index them, for example, and that they are under some special namespace. The reason is that it is much easier if you can edit it and improve it and then through time maybe things change, maybe somebody becomes notable through time and their content can be brought back.
The same for so-called non-encyclopedic content which do not merit entry by current standards. Some of those should be kept with clear visual tags that content is not yet up to the standard of Wikipedia. We could even make it so that you first get an full overlay warning and you have to click through to get to the content.
I think the whole issue of inclusionists and deletionists is so problematic because we do not step back and observe that there could be ways to address both concerns with slight changes to the process, and probably small technical changes.
It is really not necessary to be introducing artificial scarcity.
From what I read this has been going on from 2008 at least, when Paul
Graham included to fix this among his startup ideas:
http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html
This is 8 years ago.
I might really do not understand something here, but what is the plan to solve this problem? Are we just waiting for something to happen? Why are we not discussing how to find a solution which would find a consensus in the community? In 8 years there should really already be a solution?
So, what are issues people have with my proposal above? Why would not this satisfy both groups?
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 6:19 PM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Mitar is not being specific about the entry and seems more into discussing the process.
Oh, I would of course like that we discuss the particular article and get feedback on it, positive or negative. Anything helps. And I can learn more. I just do not want us to digress from the topic which for me is more even important: how to improve this experience for everyone in the future as well. I will survive. But I am a privileged white male with a good grasp of technology who experienced various online communities through years. But what about others? What about people who might have less command of the English language and would have issues discussing all this through? Who do not have so much time to discuss things through?
What we will do about that?
Maybe I should not care and I should just try to address the issues with my article and move on. But when will then anything change?
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 6:34 PM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Gadzooks! The comments you made about friendly editors to a large community of Wikipedia editors, maybe re-think saying that. I'm having a hard time getting past these comments. *I* am a friendly editor, and am actually able to help you.
Oh, sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I more than appreciate all the help and responses I am getting here. What I mean is that I would hope that it is possible to edit the Wikipedia without knowing editors and admins individually. But this would probably mean even more bureaucratic process, so maybe it is even better like this. Personally, I believe all editors are good people, with a common goal, it seems we just disagree sometimes, but this probably also comes from dissymmetry of information about particular things. Mine about Wikipedia rules, theirs about a particular topic. Addressing this dissymmetry is done through discussions.
I see how that comment might offended. Sorry again.
But you have basically said you have too much of a life to engage, IRC is HARD, etc. Huh.
I am trying to present this as an occasional editor. Yes, one solution to issues I have is to get to know Wikipedia rules and community more, to get more engaged and integrated. This is a completely valid approach.
But I wonder, is there an alternative path. What about occasional editor who might not have resources to embark on this path. Personally, it seems, I am already walking it. Yes, IRC is doable, of course. But this is because I get activated when I get frustrated and start thinking how to solve the problem. Instead of deactivated. My worry with that comment was that more obstacles are there, harder is to resolve such issues.
Quite frankly, without specifics about the entry -- and the citations used -- there's nothing anyone can do to help you. ... Which is fine, but I was trying to help solve the problem.
Oh, sorry. I thought you already find the page? So it is this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poligon
Sadly, I do not have its content anymore either. So I do not remember which sources I put there. I researched things at that time. You do not have access to the content either?
BTW, this is in fact very strange that creator of the article and editors of that article cannot access their own content anymore. I think that might be even illegal in Europe. I should be able to access my own content based on privacy laws, no?
So, should I find sources again?
One quick thing I found now is that their Facebook page has 7.000 likes:
https://www.facebook.com/PoligonCreativeCentre/
The biggest daily newspaper in Slovenia (like New York Times) has 70.000 likes:
https://www.facebook.com/DELO.FB/
Having one tenth of likes seems quite a good sign that for the local community this space is significant.
Mitar
Geni stated: "As so many projects have learned so painfully in the last decade the English Wikipedia knows what they are doing."
Sorry, but that is not correct and Mitar's case is evidence of this.
Here we have an article on a cultural organization in Slovenia, which a cursory glance of Google shows is notable, being deleted outright by an admin who 1) does not speak Slovenian (and therefore unable to check sources) and 2) who likely did not do the same cursory glance that I did.
http://www.culture.si/en/Poligon_Creative_Centre is one awesome source that is not only reliable but also establishes the so-called importance of Poligon; i.e. "...the biggest artist run space in Slovenia."
Culture.si is an encyclopedia project of the Slovenian Ministry of Culture, devoted to the culture of Slovenia. If Culture.si, which is not editable by the public, has an article on an organization, then so should Wikipedia.
On http://www.culture.si/en/Culture.si:About under "Enhance Wikipedia! Reuse our content" (yes, it is CC licensed!) they state "Wikipedia in English has over 3 million articles but not many of them are related to culture in/from Slovenia."
This is, unfortunately, true. There is likely to be more articles on Game of Thrones, than there is on Slovenian culture.
As to the article in question, it is possible that it needed a little bit of cleanup; the solution in such instances would be put a cleanup/notability tag on it, and fix issues through collaborative editings.
If, at the whim of an admin, it was really required to be moved out of mainspace it could have been moved to Draft namespace, or even user space, with a note being left for the editor on their talk page.
This would be good practice, and it astounds me that after all the words written both on the project and on this very list, no-one has had the foresight to do one of the two above things for Mitar. Even now, he is asking on IRC for someone to provide him with the text that was deleted, and that request is being ignored.
Mitar, don't apologize for anything you have done on Wikipedia, or said on this mailing list, as you have shed some light on how Wikipedia fails on many levels with new editors.
Warm regards,
Ruslan Takayev
Mitar, To get a deleted article back, ask an "Administrator" to move it to your User_page draft space so you can get your text/references . The text is still in the system, just not accessible to public. There should be no problem. You could even ask the Administrator who deleted it, via Talk page , or make request at Wikipedia:Community_portal
A number of us are currently discussing this situation on IRC. (: I believe that the immediate concern is being addressed, and we are also discussing ways of improving the deletion process on ENWP.
Pine
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 11:21 PM, carl hansen carlhansen1234@gmail.com wrote:
Mitar, To get a deleted article back, ask an "Administrator" to move it to your User_page draft space so you can get your text/references . The text is still in the system, just not accessible to public. There should be no problem. You could even ask the Administrator who deleted it, via Talk page , or make request at Wikipedia:Community_portal _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi!
This is restored version of the article with even more references (11) than at the time of deletion (8):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mitar/Poligon
Mitar
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 11:47 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
A number of us are currently discussing this situation on IRC. (: I believe that the immediate concern is being addressed, and we are also discussing ways of improving the deletion process on ENWP.
Pine
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 11:21 PM, carl hansen carlhansen1234@gmail.com wrote:
Mitar, To get a deleted article back, ask an "Administrator" to move it to your User_page draft space so you can get your text/references . The text is still in the system, just not accessible to public. There should be no problem. You could even ask the Administrator who deleted it, via Talk page , or make request at Wikipedia:Community_portal _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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My activity at en.wiki only deals with crosswiki abuse and lta "management". So don't be afraid of me but frainkly I don't find your startup incubator to be notable. In other words I don't find it to be something I expect to find on an encyclopedia.
Vito
2016-06-26 9:57 GMT+02:00 Mitar mmitar@gmail.com:
Hi!
This is restored version of the article with even more references (11) than at the time of deletion (8):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mitar/Poligon
Mitar
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 11:47 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
A number of us are currently discussing this situation on IRC. (: I
believe
that the immediate concern is being addressed, and we are also discussing ways of improving the deletion process on ENWP.
Pine
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 11:21 PM, carl hansen carlhansen1234@gmail.com wrote:
Mitar, To get a deleted article back, ask an "Administrator" to move it to your User_page draft space so you can get your text/references . The text is still in the system, just not accessible to public. There should be no problem. You could even ask the Administrator who deleted it, via Talk
page
, or make request at Wikipedia:Community_portal _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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-- http://mitar.tnode.com/ https://twitter.com/mitar_m
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Hi!
On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 2:14 AM, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
My activity at en.wiki only deals with crosswiki abuse and lta "management". So don't be afraid of me but frainkly I don't find your startup incubator to be notable. In other words I don't find it to be something I expect to find on an encyclopedia.
He he. No, the startup incubator is in the same building, but one floor higher. :-)
On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 10:30 AM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Okay, I did a pretty thorough scrub and reworking of the article. I added the logo as well as moved it to the main space. As it stood the article needed help but of course that's typical of new articles.
Wow! This is amazing! Thank you so much! The article is alive and so much better!
Hm, but while I agree that the article has not been of high quality from the start, I am really not sure if the best approach was for it to be deleted. What would be a better process in such cases? Why articles are not asked to be deleted with more time?
My article was speedy deleted based on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#A7
What I do not understand is why there is a speedy deletion if article does not explain why the subject of the article is not significant, instead of deletion if article's subject is not significant? Because the first thing could be improved, it is a content issue?
Anyway, what is the process to improve this process? Or should we just leave it be and everything is great?
Mitar
Like you where told, Having an article not assert notably, and having an article be non-notable are effectively the same thing for wikipedia.
You provided several examples specifically cities and plant/animal species, both of those have inherent notability. However companies do not have such a default status, thus must assert it. forcing the limited ~500 administrators to review and research each of the 5693 deletions performed yesterday (of which 1196 where in the main namespace) would place too much burden on them if the article fails to assert notability or isnt notable there is no effective difference.
On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 4:46 PM, Mitar mmitar@gmail.com wrote:
Hi!
On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 2:14 AM, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
My activity at en.wiki only deals with crosswiki abuse and lta "management". So don't be afraid of me but frainkly I don't find your startup incubator to be notable. In other words I don't find it to be something I expect to find on an encyclopedia.
He he. No, the startup incubator is in the same building, but one floor higher. :-)
On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 10:30 AM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Okay, I did a pretty thorough scrub and reworking of the article. I added the logo as well as moved it to the main space. As it stood the article needed help but of course that's typical of new articles.
Wow! This is amazing! Thank you so much! The article is alive and so much better!
Hm, but while I agree that the article has not been of high quality from the start, I am really not sure if the best approach was for it to be deleted. What would be a better process in such cases? Why articles are not asked to be deleted with more time?
My article was speedy deleted based on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#A7
What I do not understand is why there is a speedy deletion if article does not explain why the subject of the article is not significant, instead of deletion if article's subject is not significant? Because the first thing could be improved, it is a content issue?
Anyway, what is the process to improve this process? Or should we just leave it be and everything is great?
Mitar
-- http://mitar.tnode.com/ https://twitter.com/mitar_m
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I was the person who tagged the article we are discussing for deletion as no indication of importance. I am quite aware I have a certain frequency of error, probably about 2-5%, as does essentially everyone screening articles. Therefore there is an firmly established practice , that no administrator delete an article of such ground without a check from someone else, so it could not be deleted unless another administrator agreed. This reduces the error rate to about 0.05 to 0.25%,and I cannot imagine how and crowd-sourced process could do better.
The procedure worked in this case; I seem to have made one of my errors, and another editor caught it; the article was not deleted, but was sent to one of our two areas for further work on articles, the editor's user subpage (the other one is the Draft space, which is also used in such cases. They each have advantages, though they overlap.) I am not saying we have a perfect system here. All too many articles go to user subpages or draft space and never get heard of again; more important, many potentially good editors whose material is challenged do not have enough confidence to complain or enough knowledge to complain effectively.
We have made improvements, and if people suggest further ones, we can make them. When I joined 9 years ago, the error rate was 5-10%, many administrators deleted without waiting for confirmation, and our overall process error rate was probably at least 2%. We can still do better than the present situation, where the result essentially depends whether the article attracts the attention of one of the relatively small number of really good editors such as Brill Lyle. There are various small and large improvements suggested, some of which may be feasible. but the key problem is not balancing the number of non-notable article accepted versus the notable ones rejected, but dealing with promotionalism.
Small variations to the notability standard either way do not fundamentally harm the encycopedia, but accepting articles that are part of a promotional campaign causes great damage. Once we become a vehicle for promotion, we're useless as an encyclopedia . Articles on small organization, commercial and non-commercial, and on the people associated with them, are the ones most prone to advertising.I once also thought about dividing the site as a potential solution, but if we divided the site, the advertisers know very well the significance of having an article on WP, and would still want to be in the part where the most important articles go.
The only really effective way to rid us of promotionalism is to ban anonymous editing, and immediately reject any edits from people associated with the organization or found to be paid editors. (we'd still have problems with promotional editing fro fans and such, but this is presently a lesser problem). However, this would be removing what almost everyone here considers to be an essential core principle of WP, , and is not going to happen.
I was once an inclusionist, and I remain so,a bout any topic not lending itself to promotion ,or where the promotion can be removed.
On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 5:50 PM, John phoenixoverride@gmail.com wrote:
Like you where told, Having an article not assert notably, and having an article be non-notable are effectively the same thing for wikipedia.
You provided several examples specifically cities and plant/animal species, both of those have inherent notability. However companies do not have such a default status, thus must assert it. forcing the limited ~500 administrators to review and research each of the 5693 deletions performed yesterday (of which 1196 where in the main namespace) would place too much burden on them if the article fails to assert notability or isnt notable there is no effective difference.
On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 4:46 PM, Mitar mmitar@gmail.com wrote:
Hi!
On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 2:14 AM, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
My activity at en.wiki only deals with crosswiki abuse and lta "management". So don't be afraid of me but frainkly I don't find your startup incubator to be notable. In other words I don't find it to be something I expect to find on an encyclopedia.
He he. No, the startup incubator is in the same building, but one floor higher. :-)
On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 10:30 AM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Okay, I did a pretty thorough scrub and reworking of the article. I
added
the logo as well as moved it to the main space. As it stood the article needed help but of course that's typical of new articles.
Wow! This is amazing! Thank you so much! The article is alive and so much better!
Hm, but while I agree that the article has not been of high quality from the start, I am really not sure if the best approach was for it to be deleted. What would be a better process in such cases? Why articles are not asked to be deleted with more time?
My article was speedy deleted based on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#A7
What I do not understand is why there is a speedy deletion if article does not explain why the subject of the article is not significant, instead of deletion if article's subject is not significant? Because the first thing could be improved, it is a content issue?
Anyway, what is the process to improve this process? Or should we just leave it be and everything is great?
Mitar
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Hi!
On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 4:01 PM, David Goodman dggenwp@gmail.com wrote:
I was the person who tagged the article we are discussing for deletion as no indication of importance.
Thank you for commenting here and for you work! I know it is a lot of work and that errors are possible. This is completely expected. I really appreciate all the admins and the work they are putting in.
This reduces the error rate to about 0.05 to 0.25%,and I cannot imagine how and crowd-sourced process could do better.
This sounds amazingly low! Great job!
The procedure worked in this case; I seem to have made one of my errors, and another editor caught it; the article was not deleted, but was sent to one of our two areas for further work on articles, the editor's user subpage
No, the article was deleted. And was restored later on to my user space after I got frustrated at first and then decided to retry the whole process and dive deeper into editing Wikipedia practices. I must say that this diving was interesting, that I learned many new things, and were welcomed by many very friendly and helpful people.
All too many articles go to user subpages or draft space and never get heard of again; more important, many potentially good editors whose material is challenged do not have enough confidence to complain or enough knowledge to complain effectively.
This would be for me a much better experience. If somebody would move it to a draft space and say, "hey, please improve it first, before putting it to the main namespace" I would completely understand the process. I did not know of this practice that people create articles first in draft spaces and then move them to main once they are deemed ready. I thought that I should just create an article which is missing and make it a stub so that it is clear that it is still in process.
But it got deleted in a day, without any discussion on its talk page, and I got lost access to its content. This made me confused as an editor who is not very familiar with processes.
In general I think this should be the practice. If something is not clearly illegal or something, then it should be moved to a draft space. And if not improved in a month or so, deleted. (The latter could probably be done automatically.)
Why is this not a common practice? I think it is a good compromise between deletion and experience of editors.
So where there are clear steps what steps should be taken to improve the thing I think this is great. For example, when the speedy deletion tag was added to my article, there was a clear next step: on the talk page start a discussion why it should not be deleted. I did that. But instead of expected discussion, article was just deleted. This confused me because I was not assuming I am doing anything wrong. I am going step by step as instructed.
If instead it would be moved to draft space and said, "the article is not yet to the standard of Wikipedia, it lacks clear statement of notability, you have a month to improve it afterwards it will be deleted" I would have known what to do, even without reading rules. And it would be also a very reasonable thing for me to observe.
I think the main issue with deletion is that it is a cut-off point, something where the flow of working on an article is abruptly cut and one cannot continue without asking for help. This requires a really high activation potential.
Articles on small organization, commercial and non-commercial, and on the people associated with them, are the ones most prone to advertising. I once also thought about dividing the site as a potential solution, but if we divided the site, the advertisers know very well the significance of having an article on WP, and would still want to be in the part where the most important articles go.
Exactly, but this is a good thing, no? So the editors who are not advertisers would be OK with articles being in the draft space until they are made to the good quality, and advertisers would not like that.
So why is this argument against moving articled to the draft space instead of just deleting them?
The only really effective way to rid us of promotionalism is to ban anonymous editing, and immediately reject any edits from people associated with the organization or found to be paid editors.
Hm, but I must say that this is slightly contradictory to the issue of notability and significance. Because one way to address the issue of promotionalism is to allow articles about corporations to exist, but be very bare and simple: there is this organization with this name, at this location, with this founders, it produces milk. The end. Not much space for PR. What is wrong with such an article? Maybe it is important only to that local community who would search for all companies producing milk in their area. Or students who would like to create a map of all companies producing milk in their area. Or maybe a professor wants to determine which milk company the school should go to for a trip and would like to see which are around.
In fact, the requirement for notability to me means that I have to create great statements about this company. Why it is important. Why it is the best. Why it should be included.
If, on the other hand, the article was plain and simple, this would be easier. And then later on those students can come to the Wikipedia article about a company they visited and add a photo of it to the article, and explain what they learned during the visit about the history of the company.
Mitar
I know David in real life so maybe I am not as objective as I could be but I know how hard he works and how diligent he is about this admin work he does. He is doing the devil's work in my opinion. I couldn't do what he does so I'm thankful for his efforts. Thank you David.
When David has flagged things I've worked on -- or that I disagree on his take on something others have worked on and he's flagged -- he's been very willing to have a conversation about it -- and has changed his stance more than once.
That said, it's down to the quality of the first draft. In this instance, the draft, in my opinion, did a disservice to the subject. Although there were good citations, the content of the page was not strong enough or well developed enough to reflect what the entity actually does. And didn't establish notability or have the basic details needed to be up on Wikipedia. It was a draft and belonged in a Draft, Sandbox, or user space.
So this is another case of an enthusiastic editor putting something up on the main space without doing the building blocks work that was needed. I love the enthusiasm displayed here but helping new folks who want to create entries for their friends and relatives or want to start right off with a new entry -- vs. working on building skills by adding citations and improving the gajillions of articles that need TLC -- well it begins to wear even this inclusionist down. I don't think I had the guts or confidence to start a new stub until I had been editing regularly for 6 months, but obviously other people have a different take on this.
Also: Mitar, these long breathy quite frankly TL;DR posts don't really help your cause. I think your concerns have been expressed and people have been great about responding. But at a certain point no one has time to dig through all your words and it becomes a bit presumptive that people have time to give these legitimate concerns the attention they deserve. Just thought I'd mention that. Totally ironic of me to say because I am a long-winded person myself. So take that for what you will.... :-)
Again, only my opinion, all of the above. But wanted to give a shout out to David and thank him publicly.
- Erika
*Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle*
On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 7:01 PM, David Goodman dggenwp@gmail.com wrote:
I was the person who tagged the article we are discussing for deletion as no indication of importance. I am quite aware I have a certain frequency of error, probably about 2-5%, as does essentially everyone screening articles. Therefore there is an firmly established practice , that no administrator delete an article of such ground without a check from someone else, so it could not be deleted unless another administrator agreed. This reduces the error rate to about 0.05 to 0.25%,and I cannot imagine how and crowd-sourced process could do better.
Brill Lyle писал 2016-06-27 04:24:
That said, it's down to the quality of the first draft. In this instance, the draft, in my opinion, did a disservice to the subject. Although there were good citations, the content of the page was not strong enough or well developed enough to reflect what the entity actually does. And didn't establish notability or have the basic details needed to be up on Wikipedia. It was a draft and belonged in a Draft, Sandbox, or user space.
Or may be just to emphasize again David's point. Every new editor starting an article about a living person or an existing organization with a not-so-obvious notability is always suspected of promotional (payed of fan-like) editing. Always. And promotional editing is always a red tape.
As a new editor, do not start with articles which can be thought of as promotional. Write about history, localities, natural history, improve existing articles. Establish your name on the project. Become an autopatrolled. Then it is much safer to go to the areas attractive for promotional editors.
This is not how it should be, but how it is. This is so far our only response to promotional editing.
Cheers Yaroslav
Without weighing in on the specific's of Mitar's case, I think this is a good suggestion. I created my first Wikipedia article in 2009, after I'd been registered on the site for a few months but only had a few edits to my name. My article was on a living musician/composer, and was, rightfully I think, tagged for notability. It wasn't deleted though (I did improve it with more sources), and that article is still up today.
Regardless, it would have been good for me to get more experience by improving other articles before creating one myself. Even now, seven years later, I don't create many new articles, preferring to work on existing ones. Whenever I do create a new article, I always work up a solid version, with good sources, in my userspace first.
- Pax, aka Funcrunch
On 6/27/16 12:40 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
Or may be just to emphasize again David's point. Every new editor starting an article about a living person or an existing organization with a not-so-obvious notability is always suspected of promotional (payed of fan-like) editing. Always. And promotional editing is always a red tape.
As a new editor, do not start with articles which can be thought of as promotional. Write about history, localities, natural history, improve existing articles. Establish your name on the project. Become an autopatrolled. Then it is much safer to go to the areas attractive for promotional editors.
This is not how it should be, but how it is. This is so far our only response to promotional editing.
Cheers Yaroslav
I'm an infrequent editor. Naively, I don't understand:
1. Why the author's attempt at a discussion/clarification was ignored 2. Given point #1, why this was deleted *so* quickly, when it was merely "insignificant", and not actively harmful (e.g. copyright violation) 3. Given point #1, why the article was deleted, instead of being moved into some draft space
If any of those three had been handled differently, at a minimum, this potential new editor would have felt more welcomed. In most cases, this article would have disappeared. It was only because Mitar spoke up that the article was resurrected and turned into what is, which is apparently an article of positive value for wikipedia.
It's not clear to me how much of what happened was in line with existing policies. Perhaps some of what happened leaned toward the harsh end of normal. It's not clear to me how easy it would be to shift the policies, or implementations, slightly in the direction of being more welcoming.
I think the process "worked" as far as keeping a dodgy article out, and making efficient use of admin time. I don't think the process "worked" as far as growing the editor community, nor in terms of helping appropriate content get added.
Maybe things are as they need to be, for admin efficiency. But I think it's worth considering whether that is the case. Could we do something to improve the situation?
Thinking outside the box, perhaps by default new articles should be created in a private sandbox, so inexperienced editors won't run into this trap. A user setting could allow experienced editors to create articles directly in the main namespace, I suppose that has been discussed before, and there's probably a good reason why it won't work. Still, it seems like we should be able to find processes that are win-win-win, for new editors, admins, and readers.
NOTE: I am not speaking as a foundation employee here. This is strictly personal opinion.
Kevin Smith
On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 8:39 AM, Pax Ahimsa Gethen < list-wikimedia@funcrunch.org> wrote:
Without weighing in on the specific's of Mitar's case, I think this is a good suggestion. I created my first Wikipedia article in 2009, after I'd been registered on the site for a few months but only had a few edits to my name. My article was on a living musician/composer, and was, rightfully I think, tagged for notability. It wasn't deleted though (I did improve it with more sources), and that article is still up today.
Regardless, it would have been good for me to get more experience by improving other articles before creating one myself. Even now, seven years later, I don't create many new articles, preferring to work on existing ones. Whenever I do create a new article, I always work up a solid version, with good sources, in my userspace first.
- Pax, aka Funcrunch
On 6/27/16 12:40 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
Or may be just to emphasize again David's point. Every new editor starting an article about a living person or an existing organization with a not-so-obvious notability is always suspected of promotional (payed of fan-like) editing. Always. And promotional editing is always a red tape.
As a new editor, do not start with articles which can be thought of as promotional. Write about history, localities, natural history, improve existing articles. Establish your name on the project. Become an autopatrolled. Then it is much safer to go to the areas attractive for promotional editors.
This is not how it should be, but how it is. This is so far our only response to promotional editing.
Cheers Yaroslav
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Saw this on the latest issue of Tech News ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2016/26). Thought it might be interest as it's directly related to this thread.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Edit_Review_Improvements
see also: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/edit-review-improvements/
@Mitar -- you might want to volunteer to participate in this process, as you have a lot of suggestions. I think the first way into the project is via the Talk page, though.... :-)
- Erika
*Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle*
Hi!
Ehm, that looks great, but I have no idea what a project is and how to I join? The talk page on the Edit_Review_Improvements has just some suggestions? How is communication being done here? Sorry if this is obvious.
Mitar
On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 9:51 AM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Saw this on the latest issue of Tech News ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2016/26). Thought it might be interest as it's directly related to this thread.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Edit_Review_Improvements
see also: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/edit-review-improvements/
@Mitar -- you might want to volunteer to participate in this process, as you have a lot of suggestions. I think the first way into the project is via the Talk page, though.... :-)
- Erika
*Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Thanks for the responses. I think the overarching thought I have is that Wikipedia needs to learn as much from editors as editors need to learn from Wikipedia. I'm glad other editors are responding and focusing on this.
I'm doing remote support of an editathon today so I will work on assisting on cleanup with this article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mitar/Poligon
Another hopefully helpful idea:
Use another makerspace/coworkspace entry / entries as examples of structure and content: - I know about this local one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyebeam_(organization) - which led to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyebeam_(organization)#See_also
- Erika
*Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle*
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 11:57 PM, Mitar mmitar@gmail.com wrote:
Hi!
Thanks you for all the responses. It is really great to see this various explanations.
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 6:34 PM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Gadzooks! The comments you made about friendly editors to a large
community
of Wikipedia editors, maybe re-think saying that. I'm having a hard time getting past these comments. *I* am a friendly editor, and am actually
able
to help you.
Oh, sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I more than appreciate all the help and responses I am getting here. What I mean is that I would hope that it is possible to edit the Wikipedia without knowing editors and admins individually. But this would probably mean even more bureaucratic process, so maybe it is even better like this. Personally, I believe all editors are good people, with a common goal, it seems we just disagree sometimes, but this probably also comes from dissymmetry of information about particular things. Mine about Wikipedia rules, theirs about a particular topic. Addressing this dissymmetry is done through discussions.
I see how that comment might offended. Sorry again.
But you have basically said you have too much of a life to engage, IRC is HARD, etc. Huh.
I am trying to present this as an occasional editor. Yes, one solution to issues I have is to get to know Wikipedia rules and community more, to get more engaged and integrated. This is a completely valid approach.
But I wonder, is there an alternative path. What about occasional editor who might not have resources to embark on this path. Personally, it seems, I am already walking it. Yes, IRC is doable, of course. But this is because I get activated when I get frustrated and start thinking how to solve the problem. Instead of deactivated. My worry with that comment was that more obstacles are there, harder is to resolve such issues.
Quite frankly, without specifics about the entry -- and the citations
used
-- there's nothing anyone can do to help you. ... Which is fine, but I
was
trying to help solve the problem.
Oh, sorry. I thought you already find the page? So it is this page:
Okay, I did a pretty thorough scrub and reworking of the article. I added the logo as well as moved it to the main space. As it stood the article needed help but of course that's typical of new articles.
While the citations were okay I added more to them, and found a lot of English articles as well as a few more Slovenian ones. There's probably a lot more information out there but I need to stop and assist with the ongoing editathon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poligon_Creative_Centre
Please feel free to edit, adjust, rework.
:-)
- Erika
*Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle*
On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 11:33 AM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for the responses. I think the overarching thought I have is that Wikipedia needs to learn as much from editors as editors need to learn from Wikipedia. I'm glad other editors are responding and focusing on this.
I'm doing remote support of an editathon today so I will work on assisting on cleanup with this article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mitar/Poligon
Another hopefully helpful idea:
Use another makerspace/coworkspace entry / entries as examples of structure and content:
- I know about this local one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyebeam_(organization)
- which led to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyebeam_(organization)#See_also
- Erika
*Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle*
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 11:57 PM, Mitar mmitar@gmail.com wrote:
Hi!
Thanks you for all the responses. It is really great to see this various explanations.
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 6:34 PM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Gadzooks! The comments you made about friendly editors to a large
community
of Wikipedia editors, maybe re-think saying that. I'm having a hard time getting past these comments. *I* am a friendly editor, and am actually
able
to help you.
Oh, sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I more than appreciate all the help and responses I am getting here. What I mean is that I would hope that it is possible to edit the Wikipedia without knowing editors and admins individually. But this would probably mean even more bureaucratic process, so maybe it is even better like this. Personally, I believe all editors are good people, with a common goal, it seems we just disagree sometimes, but this probably also comes from dissymmetry of information about particular things. Mine about Wikipedia rules, theirs about a particular topic. Addressing this dissymmetry is done through discussions.
I see how that comment might offended. Sorry again.
But you have basically said you have too much of a life to engage, IRC is HARD, etc. Huh.
I am trying to present this as an occasional editor. Yes, one solution to issues I have is to get to know Wikipedia rules and community more, to get more engaged and integrated. This is a completely valid approach.
But I wonder, is there an alternative path. What about occasional editor who might not have resources to embark on this path. Personally, it seems, I am already walking it. Yes, IRC is doable, of course. But this is because I get activated when I get frustrated and start thinking how to solve the problem. Instead of deactivated. My worry with that comment was that more obstacles are there, harder is to resolve such issues.
Quite frankly, without specifics about the entry -- and the citations
used
-- there's nothing anyone can do to help you. ... Which is fine, but I
was
trying to help solve the problem.
Oh, sorry. I thought you already find the page? So it is this page:
Mitar
Gadzooks! The comments you made about friendly editors to a large community of Wikipedia editors, maybe re-think saying that. I'm having a hard time getting past these comments. *I* am a friendly editor, and am actually able to help you. But you have basically said you have too much of a life to engage, IRC is HARD, etc. Huh.
Quite frankly, without specifics about the entry -- and the citations used -- there's nothing anyone can do to help you. It seems this is more about discussing the process and your experience than finding a solution. Which is fine, but I was trying to help solve the problem.
As others have said, this is not a new issue, or a newly discovered issue. Saying the problem is systemic and not taking responsibility for yourself as an editor by learning some of the requirements and rules of Wikipedia seems to be a bit of an evasion of responsibility, perhaps?
Notability is definitely something that is highly debated within the community, and I actually think there has been a lot of improvement in this area. But if your citations -- or your entry -- isn't well done, I believe that's when there are problems. Again, I would like to see these citations, Slovenian or otherwise.
And I agree with John that there should be checks and balances. Many people or subjects do not merit an article, but many others do.
- Erika
*Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle*
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 3:06 PM, Mitar mmitar@gmail.com wrote:
Hi!
Thank you for your responses.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 11:29 PM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Please include your user name and the name of the article you were
working
on. Without any context it's impossible to help you. Thankfully I was
able
to dig and find the page, etc. But include identifying info if you want help / resolution.
I didn't want to include this information because I didn't want to make it about my issue in particular. I wanted to give feedback and discuss principles behind my experience.
I otherwise had good experience editing Wikipedia. Other editors were constructive and often with patience helped me learn how to improve the content and related rules of Wikipedia, which also seemed reasonable. But this rule I do not get and cannot relate to, thus I am bringing it here.
I read that Wikipedia is trying hard to get new editors and this is why I am sharing this story here. Because from all my experience this one is the most problematic. It really pushes you off.
And it is pretty reasonable that it is problematic. Now that most clearly "notable" articles have been already written the one which are left will be increasingly more and more in the "gray zone". And increasingly local, specialized, where such mistakes might be common.
Maybe this policy for notability and significance had its historic place. It focused the community on the core set of articles, improving the quality of existing articles and created a name for Wikipedia. But I think maybe it is time that it is relaxed and a new level of articles is invited in. As I said, a warning could be used to tell readers that they are reading such a new article.
(Oh, and please improve talk pages, that way of communicating is also a mess, but that one I can understand, it is a technical legacy. It is cumbersome, but I can understand it. But it does influence other issues then, like this one when you have to discuss something about Wikipedia. Why Wikipedia does not simply use some issue-management system where people could be opening issues for articles and other people and have conversation through that? It would also allow much better statistics of how many issues were satisfactory resolved, for example, for all sides.)
Discussion (with reason):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG#Please_remove_the_tag_from_Polig...
Yes, it is clear that the editor who deleted it does not understand local importance of the article. They could read the news articles I cited and might get a better picture.
The issue is here that while new editors can edit pages, see tags to improve sources and so on, that is all helpful. But once a page is deleted, they are pushed off and cannot do anything anymore. I just started with the article. I could improve it through time, get more information in why it is important and so on. But once it is deleted nothing of this is not possible. I have to go around and find ways how to object to this, and I have no idea how to do that. (This is also why I am writing to such general list like this.)
I don't have rights to view the deleted article, but if someone who does moves it to your sandbox or a draft space you could work on it there,
and I
would be happy to take a quick look at it / try to help.
But the problem is systemic. It does not matter if we resolve it for this particular page. Also, if a page is in my sandbox then it is only on me to fix it and improve it. If it is its dedicated namespace then others can help edit it because they can find it. This is the whole power of Wikipedia, that it is not that one person has to write the whole article, but that multiple people can collaborate.
Maybe a solution would be that an article can exist under its namespace and link then to this sandbox version saying that article is still in development. In general Wikipedia could be just an directory of pages, some could be edited in Wikipedia and some could be linked elsewhere, until they are seen as worthy of Wikipedia.
The structures you propose exist, but if you don't educate yourself on procedures and policies and are a casual editor, you might not be aware
of
them. Not trying to be mean or harsh here but I appreciate your passion
and
thoughts and want you to know there are solutions in place....
I followed instructions which were presented to me in the speedy deletion tag: I opened a talk page for an article and objected to deletion. The result was that next day the article was deleted without any discussion.
What structures exist here?
I am talking about structures which would prevent deletion, and structures which would help editors explain local significance of articles. Structures which might exist to revert deletion are too late. Editors might not return anymore.
The best solution I've found if as a newish user you are wanting to
create
new articles (as a short stub) is to do it in your Sandbox and make sure you have at least 5 (or even 10) very solid citations.
I had citations. It seems it was not enough.
Have a friendly editor take a look at the article before attempting to
move it to the main
space.
Friendly editor? How am I supposed to find one? I do not want to be harsh, but I am here to write content, not to mingle with other editors and socialize. I have enough other things in my life. I can understand that for some editors this is their online social space/forum and they know each other. But for me is something where I get to occasionally, I want to fix a thing I care about, and I move on. If I find trash on the floor I pick it up and carry it to the nearest thrash can. I do not want to interact with city utilities system or talk to supervisors.
(BTW, talking to a friendly editor comes back to the issue of really strange talk pages. Probably all you got used to them, but they are really a mess.)
It is critical you use the citations to establish notability. Not everything is notable, and especially if the Wiki-en audience isn't knowledgeable of the subject matter, it's even more important.
I did that. Of course, citations were to Slovenian news articles in Slovenian, only one was in English. And this is why I started the Wikipedia article. To bring more international exposure to a local thing.
but their goal is to "protect" Wiki content, so....
Hm, protect from what? Existence? If content is true, why it needs protection? If content is not yet complete, guide it to being complete.
The IRC help channel ( http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-en-help) is also a great resource -- especially if it's a time zone issue.
BTW, you do realize that many of new people online and potential new editors are not familiar with IRC? Mailing list are already
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 1:11 AM, carl hansen carlhansen1234@gmail.com wrote:
You have been hit by crossfire in the long running Inclusionist vs. Deletionist war.
Instead of waging war, could we open some discussion about middle group solutions? For example, what is wrong with having such pages tagged with "not an encyclopedia-grade article, possible lacking notability and/or significance" and move on? And then we can discuss the merits of that tag being applied to a particular article. Which is much less new-editor-scary than a warning "page is nominated for speedy deletion" and bam, deleted.
Has this ever been put up for a vote by the community?
Mitar
On 25/06/2016 06:49, Mitar wrote:
Hi!
I am an occasional editor of Wikipedia, I read it a lot, I edit sometimes, and I am at all not familiar with bureaucracies and rules Wikipedia community has developed through years (call me lazy, but they simply always look too scary and too many for me to even start reading them, walls and walls of text). When I interact with Wikipedia I thus try to assume what reasonable rules for creating a collaborative source of all human knowledge would be.
I don't know which articles you are referencing and I don't think I need to know. The problem, is that less than 5% of the articles are in any way useful. There are 100s of thousands of articles that simply tell me that X x is moth, or a beetle and nothing more. If I know to be looking up X x then I already know that it is a moth and not some form of frog. The there are the 100s of thousands of articles that simply tell me that A B played one game of professional baseball in 1927. Or the 100s of thousands of articles that simple state that Z is a village in Iran with 43 people.
Wikipedia is full of this stuff which you can see by pressing the random article link a few times. If you find anything comprehensive which isn't also riddled with errors. It will almost certainly be a direct cut&paste from somewhere else.
Simple the site is overflowing with useless junk that monitoring it has become impossible. Know one can stop Z from being moved to Cambodia, or A B from being noted for playing tiddlywinks, or indeed turning X x into a frog.
On Sun, 26 Jun 2016 15:04:54 +0100 Lilburne lilburne@tygers-of-wrath.net wrote:
On 25/06/2016 06:49, Mitar wrote:
Hi!
I am an occasional editor of Wikipedia, I read it a lot, I edit sometimes, and I am at all not familiar with bureaucracies and rules Wikipedia community has developed through years (call me lazy, but they simply always look too scary and too many for me to even start reading them, walls and walls of text). When I interact with Wikipedia I thus try to assume what reasonable rules for creating a collaborative source of all human knowledge would be.
That is one of the meanings of "Ignore all rules:" Assume the rules are reasonable and edit.
Fred Bauder
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org